The Call of Cthulhu (2005): This is a black and white, filmed in 20's silent film style movie released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. It's actually pretty fucking great, and the best Lovecraft adaptation I've seen so far. Dude is difficult to adapt. The music is actually really amazing, which is a problem I have with silent films sometimes (especially Nosferatu. I haven't heard a single score of that movie that I liked more than a few moments of). The actors are all heavily made up and put on over the top expressions. The feeling of dread permeates every moment. You can tell they had an almost non-existent budget, so going this route was a stroke of genius. R'yleh looks really good, with non-euclidean angles aplenty! Cthulhu himself though...They used stop-motion to animate him and he looks pretty bad. But at the same time, it's endearing. This is probably what he would have looked like if they DID adapt the story in those years.

Yeah, that movie was really cool. I actually liked the obvious "this is a movie set" feel to R'yleh, and the "this is a movie monster" feel to Cthulhu. I agree about the music, it was extremely well-done.

I also saw the same company's version of The Whisperer in Darkness, which wasn't as good. It's a lot longer, and has actual spoken dialogue. The spoken dialogue wasn't really that great since most of the cast aren't like professional actors, which is part of why The Call of Cthulhu worked a little better. It's also just not as interesting a story in the first place. I'd love to see them do some other Lovecraft stories in the silent style of TCoC though.

In case anyone doesn't know what this is, it's the animation adaption of the video game that came out a few years ago. Now I had issues with the game being a blatant God of War rip off, but that's another forum. As for the story, I'm actually for an action version of Dante's Inferno being told, and this wasn't that bad of an adaption.

Here's my problem with the story. Dante's Inferno is unique with it's appearance of the devil in that it took new angle on things, similar to Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost had the devil portrayed as a more sympathetic character despite still being a villain and the cause of the fall of man, he's made understandable. The same is true of the devil in Dante's Inferno, he's actually not a tormenter (with the exception of Judas and the two roman traitors), he's another victim of hell and god is the source of punishment. I feel that by taking the devil and making him the run of the mill pure evil and source of wrong, they missed the point and wasted adapting what was one of the most fascinating aspects of the original story.

One other note, they brought in like 5 or 7 different anime directors and had them directing different parts of he story. That might work for something like Animatrix, but it's very distracting here, especially when appearances are changed dramatically and some legit look better then others. Although some of the hell visuals and character designs where impressive.

I didn't have high hopes going in, and honestly it wasn't as bad as expected, it still left a lot to be desired.

The movie I have on now is something called Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver. The basic gist of the movie so far: an evil, serial killer, foul mouthed, mix-of-puppet-and-shitty-CGI, sentient gingerbread man escapes from prison, finds a time machine, and ends up in 1976. The 70s here are in a world populated by fat, pimple faced little children, roller skating rinks smeared in cocaine, and incredibly horny bisexuals who skate to an incredibly poor imitation of Car Wash, none of whom even remotely look like they belong in the 70s. They all look like early-to-mid-20-somethings dressing up in stereotypical 70s garb for Halloween, only they all have modern hairstyles. The local roller rink is being shut down by the IRS for unpaid back taxes, and the youths are coming up with ways to save the building, but the plot point is almost immediately thrown aside (yet not forgotten) in favor of a Carrie reference (she still looks more like Carrie White than Chloe Grace Moretz does). They also refer to coke in this movie as "nose candy", making it the only other time I've heard coke referred to by that name outside that legendarily bad "Just Say No!" episode of Punky Brewster. The gingerdead man, while watching a group of women giving an abandoned car a bikini car wash (and that is to say there's less actual car washing and more pouring suds all over their tits), and in the middle of whacking off he sees a large vat of hydrochloric acid that's just sitting in the middle of the lot for whatever reason. He hooks their hose up to it, and they spray it all over each other, consequently melting away in a horrible CGI effect.

Might I also add that one of the girls bursts into flames for absolutely no reason?

It's generally not a type of movie I'd watch in my spare time, but I had started it a few years ago and never finished it. So when I saw it was offered on Netflix, I thought, "why not?"The reason it gets a 3 out of 5 is simply because it's nothing memorable. It's a cutesy movie with some good scenes, though the cinematography is nothing to write home about. The idea is good and they have some well-known actors to back it up (Kate Winslet, Elijah Wood, Jim Carrey...). The best part is the "inception" type of plot twist...that you can see coming from miles away (which also has some holes in it as well). So, in the end, it gets a 3/5 because it's nothing too special.

The Man of Steel was a great movie and a great updating for the current times. The teaming of Christopher Nolan, David Goyer and Zach Snyder was about the wisest of choices if they wanted to pull off another Superman film. I didn't hate Superman Returns; Brandon Routh was eerily like Christopher Reeve so he nailed it but it the script sucked and Kevin Spacey was lackluster as Lex Luthor. Henry Cavill was the perfect choice for a reboot and perfectly suited towards the more cynical tone of the new rendering.

It was so enthralling, that I forgot that John Williams' classic score was absent.

When Georg the little boy gets shot, I think they should've wrapped up the movie from that point, I understand that they put the mobile phone in the water and have no contact with anyone but for fucks sakes, why didn't the mother leave the house earlier for help after all of this?So she's helping her husband after his broken leg, sure but her son's brains were just painted on the walls, go find help you dumb bitch!

Personally, I really detested Our Town and thought the ironicist remake (American Beauty) was much better, although much like Salinger, it still reeked of mile-wide-inch-deep blame casting.

Meh, I find American Beauty pretty overrated. The entire film rests on a handful of fairly transparent plot twists which are all pelted at the viewer in rapid succession in the last five minutes. I'm perfectly fine with twists (hell, Dogville has a fucking whopper at the end), but using an entire two hour movie as nothing but a prop for a bunch of last minute twists is fucking lame; it'd be better just to relegate something like that to short form. Anyway, I always found it kinda funny that a movie that asks its very audience to "look closer" comes off so trite and shallow on deeper inspection.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a total wash or anything. Outside of the terrible Mena Suvari, the acting is great and the photography was groundbreaking for the time. It's just a shame the script (the bit that gets hailed the most) was so thoroughly uninspired.

Also, it's because of American Beauty that we now have the atrocity that is True Blood

I actually like American Beauty quite a bit. I've seen it numerous times over the years, and I agree that the plot twists are probably the least interesting part of the whole thing. I disagree that the entire film rests on the twists; honestly, I wonder if it would have been a better film if it had just revealed right from the beginning who killed Kevin Spacey's character and why - and come up with a more dramatically satisfying killer. Obviously the movie's main themes are about overcoming the apathy and routine and materialism of American suburban culture and rediscovering joy and passion in life, even if it means becoming a social outcast - the photographer kid is portrayed as being an "untouchable" at school and a drug dealer out of school, but at the same time he is able to find real joy and satisfaction in his life while so many others can't. As you said, the photography very much supports Kevin Spacey's rediscovery of wonder in the world - of course the infamous "naked in rose petals" shots represent his passion, but there are plenty of other, similar bits too.

Mena Suvari's acting was actually fine I thought, considering her character was basically supposed to be acting anyway, in pretending that she had all this sexual experience when really she had zero. I'm not sure if you counted her lying as a part of the twists at the end, but that one at least made a lot of sense and was handled reasonably - Kevin Spacey realized that he'd built her up in his mind to represent something that she actually wasn't, and he was mature enough to back away from the fantasy at the end.

Anyway I really like the movie, but I agree the ending twists kind of overshadow the main point a bit - it definitely could have stood on its own feet without them, and probably would have been a better, subtler film.

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MorbidBlood wrote:

So the winner is Destruction and Infernal Overkill is the motherfucking skullcrushing poserkilling satan-worshiping 666 FUCK YOU greatest german thrash record.

I haven't seen American Beauty in a few years, but I really think the directing and cinematography are first rate. Even though it's been so long, I remember a lot of very vivid, gorgeously done shots and I just really enjoy how artful and engaging it all is. Really, really good lighting, too - I'm no expert on any of this, but AB is just a feast for the eyes.

I basically agree with FSM on the film's content too - perhaps it's a little obvious, in a Fight Club-esque way, about its themes, but I think it has its place and works pretty well at what it's doing, a critique on the materialistic and shallow nature of suburban 1990s life. The twists make it a little less subtle and artful storywise, but not too much I don't think, and I still like them. The characters are all good and I actually really like Spacey's character in it. Damn, he had a lot of awesome roles in the 90s.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with being unsubtle about your themes - after all, the character himself knows what the "theme" is, because it's essentially about personal growth that he's consciously trying to achieve.

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MorbidBlood wrote:

So the winner is Destruction and Infernal Overkill is the motherfucking skullcrushing poserkilling satan-worshiping 666 FUCK YOU greatest german thrash record.

Here are some observations I made on my Facebook about the piddling box office performance on The Lone Ranger. For backstory, the movie cost $250 million and it has so far failed to make $50 million at the American box office. Worldwide it's only made $73 million.

Quote:

In looking at the last couple weeks of box office returns, I have this to say:

The Lone Ranger is going to bomb so astronomically fucking hard that Disney will be begging Taylor Kitsch to headline another movie for them.

The two big factors I've seen in terms of its terrible box office performance have been the general audience for it being quite old, with 58% of its audience being over 35 and 24% over 50, and it opening the same week as Despicable Me 2, which has already made nearly $300 million worldwide. That movie is sucking up all the families and younger portions of the movie-going audience that might have gone to see The Lone Ranger, plus in this day and age you also hafta take into account the rapid word-of-mouth about the film being pretty terrible as well (it's got a 25% on Rotten Tomatoes at the moment).

Also, and this is just my own personal observation, I think American audiences are starting to get a bit tired of Johnny Depp. The Rum Diary being a bust and the most recent Pirates movie, Alice in Wonderland, and Dark Shadows all being critical bombs, as well as just general overexposure in the past decade, have made quite a few people pretty annoyed by Depp and his constant "out there" role decisions. He's nowhere near box office poison (yet), but Lone Ranger's unquestionable failure both financially and critically could spell some dark times ahead for him.

Should be really interesting to see how next weekend is, considering how the one of the biggest movies of the summer, at least to me, opens(Pacific Rim). I hope Grown Ups 2 flops so bad as I can't stand any of the cast.

Nine Miles Down-Sent to a remote outpost in the desert to discover the cause of communications failure with the site, a security worker discovers the workers there uncovered the literal location of Hell beneath their feet and try to work through the continuous onslaught of hallucinations to get away alive. This here turned out to be quite an enjoyable and creepy effort even though there's some flaws to be had here. The continuous notion of everything being a dream or hallucination gets old incredibly fast because it's hard to sustain any kind of fear or suspense with just two people the entire time and nobody else during the movie, which leaves this one as a never-ending series of visions and creepy scenes that won't affect the well-being of those around because nothing has to happen to them until the end. That, in the end, really robs the film of a lot of potentially intriguing methods to generate some suspense throughout because everything that's happening can't harm the leads so they must make it all the way through, so the forced constraint in the story doesn't really allow this one to stretch as far as it could. That said, when it relies on the creepy images and chilling story idea, this is quite solid and really has a lot going for it to be able to throw as many striking images as possible here, with all the horrific demons, personal torment and just plain crazy ideas thrown in here that make for a really enjoyable time. If it would've been able to fix that one area in the story, this could've been so much more.

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joppek wrote:

enigmatech wrote:

I don't consider Portal to be a death metal band, because I haven't heard their albums, and I'm not interested in their music

i don't consider gordon ramsay to be a chef, because i haven't been to his restaurants, and i'm not interested in his food

Die Hard 5 - It's been a few years since I've seen the previous entry (you know, the one that "pussied out" and went for a PG-13 rating), but I remember part 4 being much better than this one. Part 5 just felt like one extended chase scene, and I quickly got bored of watching vehicles get smashed.

_________________Currently listening toKing Diamond - Them (Finally built up a tolerance for vocals)

Curse of Chucky trailer out. It looks like a true return to form with the Chucky franchise as seen in the original three movies. Quite stoked for this seeing as most horror movies today seem to be either terrible possession films or bad classic horror movie remakes. Now if they could only make a good Nightmare on Elm St movie again...

^This. I really don't know how anyone could be excited let alone interested in something so clearly mediocre. It'll will do nothing to restore the franchise but will be the final nail in coffin to a series that's been dead since it's sequel.

Die Hard 5 - It's been a few years since I've seen the previous entry (you know, the one that "pussied out" and went for a PG-13 rating), but I remember part 4 being much better than this one. Part 5 just felt like one extended chase scene, and I quickly got bored of watching vehicles get smashed.

I actually liked the fourth one. It actually felt like an entire movie to me. The fifth gave me more of a tv show episode vibe. There was little character development and I felt like I was watching an episode of Hawaii Five-O or 24 or something like that.

In my opinion, 1 and 3 were the only good ones and easily the most quotable. 4.0 wasn't terrible but it was a largely forgettable action thriller, plus they threw out the every man aspect that made the first movies so suspenseful, and Bruce Willis' one liners and dialogue felt incredibly forced like regurgitated Clint Eastwood quotes. I don't know why anyone would watch the 5th, by all accounts it's meant to be so far removed from the series that it should have called it something different.

^This. I really don't know how anyone could be excited let alone interested in something so clearly mediocre. It'll will do nothing to restore the franchise but will be the final nail in coffin to a series that's been dead since it's sequel.

There's no restoring the franchise, but even though it will probably be mediocre, Dourif's Chucky is a guilty pleasure for me. I'll check it out.

I just hope that Chucky in this isn't CGI. That will completely kill any interest I have in watching the movie. He looked like an animatronic from the trailer, so there's at least hope that they did it the proper way.

Watched Gangster Squad last night and while it was no pinnacle of film making it definitely delivered on the brawler/knock down drag out action which I'm a big fan of... tired of all the slick looking kung fu action sequences that seem to prevail these days and GS was a welcome change. Also, I fucking hate Sean Penn so him being cast as the villain was perfect.

Meh, I find American Beauty pretty overrated. The entire film rests on a handful of fairly transparent plot twists which are all pelted at the viewer in rapid succession in the last five minutes. I'm perfectly fine with twists (hell, Dogville has a fucking whopper at the end), but using an entire two hour movie as nothing but a prop for a bunch of last minute twists is fucking lame; it'd be better just to relegate something like that to short form. Anyway, I always found it kinda funny that a movie that asks its very audience to "look closer" comes off so trite and shallow on deeper inspection.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a total wash or anything. Outside of the terrible Mena Suvari, the acting is great and the photography was groundbreaking for the time. It's just a shame the script (the bit that gets hailed the most) was so thoroughly uninspired.

Also, it's because of American Beauty that we now have the atrocity that is True Blood

I actually like American Beauty quite a bit. I've seen it numerous times over the years, and I agree that the plot twists are probably the least interesting part of the whole thing. I disagree that the entire film rests on the twists; honestly, I wonder if it would have been a better film if it had just revealed right from the beginning who killed Kevin Spacey's character and why - and come up with a more dramatically satisfying killer. Obviously the movie's main themes are about overcoming the apathy and routine and materialism of American suburban culture and rediscovering joy and passion in life, even if it means becoming a social outcast - the photographer kid is portrayed as being an "untouchable" at school and a drug dealer out of school, but at the same time he is able to find real joy and satisfaction in his life while so many others can't. As you said, the photography very much supports Kevin Spacey's rediscovery of wonder in the world - of course the infamous "naked in rose petals" shots represent his passion, but there are plenty of other, similar bits too.

Mena Suvari's acting was actually fine I thought, considering her character was basically supposed to be acting anyway, in pretending that she had all this sexual experience when really she had zero. I'm not sure if you counted her lying as a part of the twists at the end, but that one at least made a lot of sense and was handled reasonably - Kevin Spacey realized that he'd built her up in his mind to represent something that she actually wasn't, and he was mature enough to back away from the fantasy at the end.

Anyway I really like the movie, but I agree the ending twists kind of overshadow the main point a bit - it definitely could have stood on its own feet without them, and probably would have been a better, subtler film.

You know, on further reflection, I honestly remember only the plot twists and how contrived they felt. I'm not even sure I remember Suvari's individual performance in the film and am instead just filling in the cracks in my memory with her more recent (dreadful) performances (except for her role in former Bathory drummer Jonas Akerlund's film SPUN--she was quite good there). I'll have to check it out again, perhaps pausing before the last five minutes to let the earlier part soak in. Although the image of Kevin Spacey jacking off in the shower isn't really one I'm itching to revisit soo... WELL, would you look at that; I DID remember something that wasn't just part of the last five minutes after all!

Oh hey, my roommate and I are totally watching Gor in the next two or three days. The trailer alone blew his fucking mind. We may even round up some mates to partake.

Yeah, I actually did like it more than any of the Sam Raimi ones. I thought the first of those was pretty hammy/bad, the second was decent, and the third was just bloated, over-indulgent and just pales in comparison to something like The Avengers. However, the new Spidey reboot was pretty neat, and those actors are all solid, if horribly miscast, so it could be good.

I remember even when I was 13 and the first Raimi one came out, I didn't think it was all that great. I grew up on Spider-Man comics and the newest movie is the one that really hits on what I liked about the character growing up. The Raimi ones were, eh, okay I guess, but just didn't have the level of intensity (or emotional connection for that matter) I wanted, and I never thought Tobey Maguire was any good. The third one was awful, but I never really cared much because I didn't love the first two anyway.

The Hitcher (2007) - 0/5

Awful, just awful. After re-watching the original a few days after this one, I really just don't know how I could give the remake any points at all. It's a piece of shit. Sean Bean trying to imitate Rutger Hauer is the best thing about this, and he doesn't even do all that good of a job in the face of the appalling script - by the end he mostly just mutters his lines like a zombie. Pretty much any tension in the original is ruined here. The story is the same, but in their minor attempts to change things the filmmakers destroy any kind of fear or suspense. Like most horror remakes it's filled with swearing and overly grotesque scenes that leave nothing to the imagination. I wish I could go back in time and stop this from existing.

Tamara - 1.5/5

A silly movie without any real adult themes or ideas...just childish fantasizing, over the top special effects and a plot with a distinct lack of intelligence or sense being made. Not really worth serious thought at all.

Lost Highway - 4.25/5

David Lynch's 1997 film is a trippy, artful venture into noir country with a really terrifying moment in the first act that the movie never quite tops. It's all good, but I like the Bill Pullman parts better than the parts with that other guy - at those parts it becomes a little too much like Blue Velvet. The film as a whole is more artistic and idiosyncratic than BV though, and everything is shrouded in mystery. Lynch's traditional style of stark, oddly lit scenes with dirge-like scores over top is as terrifying as ever, and the fun is in trying to figure out what everything means - putting the pieces together at the end, especially. But trying too hard to dissect the meanings of this is futile. I like Lost Highway because it's an emotional experience that flows like an ocean, relying on the feelings created by scenes and dialogue rather than a mechanical 'point A to point B' approach to screenwriting. It's a cool flick and I hope to see it again sometime and really see things I missed this time.

If you thought that was bad, make sure you don't see Hitcher 2 with Jake Busey as John Ryder's replacement, I'd imagine that would get a negative 5 rating.

Good to see the top rating for Lost Highway, that's easily my favourite film of his. To pick away at it would be futile as it's intended to be unexplainable, just like the reason most of our dreams don't form a perfect story or characters or buildings that are sometimes featured shouldn't belong there for obvious reasons. Sure the shifting to another body can be a little jarring but it grows on you quickly and it's a natural progression, all the strange quirks build up, they're not scattered all over the place like some of his other films. It's just unfortunate that he hasn't done anything as good or as interesting.

I did see The Hitcher 2, before the remake. Was crap, but not as crap as the remake. I reviewed both on my blog if you're interested.

And yeah, it was very dreamlike and surreal for sure. I like also how he takes this sort of noir framework of sullen, mysterious women in long flowing dresses getting mixed up with horrible abusive men, and turns it into such bizarre stories. I thought Mulholland Dr was way better though - that one is just an insurmountable work of art for me.

A silly movie without any real adult themes or ideas...just childish fantasizing, over the top special effects and a plot with a distinct lack of intelligence or sense being made. Not really worth serious thought at all.

That's about as accurate as summation of this movie as one could possibly give. It's not horrible, it's not great, and it's not even that good. It's just a movie, planted firmly in the seat of adequacy and good if you want to kill 90 minutes with no deep thought necessary for viewing. The effects were pretty good though, if, as you said, over the top.

I will say though that the girl becoming a wisecracking, one liner spewing snark after her resurrection both amused and annoyed me since it was about as cliche a route to take with the villain as possible. Her father being a boozing pederast interested in being inside of her was quite corny too.

they get home and Pullman sees a shadow in the window is just insane...then it gets followed up with that freaky as fuck dream for a few seconds followed by her turning over with that fucking face - god damn that was good. So, so much scarier than most horror flicks.

I didn't think Tamara was complete shit. There's much worse to be found in the realm of teen slasher flicks than that movie. It's not something I'd ever really watch again, but for the time it was on I wasn't cursing the day I became a bigger movie fan.